Abstract
In this chapter, the theoretical foundations of the conception of crisis are explained. The crisis is viewed as a necessary moment of the process of capital accumulation, this need arising from both its inevitability and its indispensability. The author thus establishes the bases from which to analyze the Great Recession in Spain: methodological aspects, the role of production and the law of value, and the place that the crisis occupies in the economic thought. The crisis is shown as an absolutely central reality, for which the author claims the relationship that the theory of crisis has with the foundations of economic theory—in particular, with a materialist approach that highlights the fundamental structures of the capitalist system. These methodological foundations reveal as well the deep and radical distance that separates this theory from other accounts of the possibility of crisis.
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Notes
- 1.
For example, the analysis must start from the capital-in-general in its abstraction, and then, at the most concrete level, the explanation must take into account its various fractions, as well as the way in which contradictions can be displaced, either in social, temporary or geographic terms. These issues will be addressed in the next chapter.
- 2.
Note that this methodological perspective has several decisive implications for an adequate explanation of the crisis. For example, microeconomically, the value of a commodity has priority over the parts that comprise it. Total abstract labor precedes the amount of wage or profit in which it can be decomposed, so that the theory of the crisis is not based on the variations of these parts of the output. The same happens with the interest rate, which only acquires meaning within the framework of the total surplus value, since it is the cycle of capital that explains its movements. On the other hand, the total amount of surplus, and therefore the rate of exploitation, are determined at the social level, making an abstraction of each concrete activity. That is to say, the rate of surplus value is conceptually prior to the individual ones, as Weeks (2010) correctly points out. This ratio, therefore, acquires existence first at the macroeconomic level, is not the result of the aggregation of the sectorial ratios. The holistic approach contrasts with the aggregate or microeconomic perspective (Morishima 1973), according to which the rate of surplus value would be the result of a weighted average of the sectoral rates. The most concrete application of these questions can be seen in the next chapter.
- 3.
Indeed, it was Marx who, through praising Kaufman and so making his claim as his own, made reference to “laws not only independent of human will, consciousness and intelligence, but rather, on the contrary, determining that will, consciousness and intelligence” (Marx 1867: 18 [MECW 35]).
- 4.
In pre-capitalist modes of production, the extraction of the surplus was carried out in a more transparent manner, since domination by the owner was evident. There were no hidden elements that should be theorized, since “non-economic forces such as political power or tradition clarified the rules of who produced what, how it was produced and who received the fruits of production. Consequently, in these societies, everything was simple and plain” (Tsoulfidis 2010: 6).
- 5.
In Marx’s own work, the tendency toward crisis is already embryonic in the first volume of Capital and its “general law of accumulation”. Although Marx only exposes the law of the tendency of the profit rate to fall later, in the third volume, he does so still in the degree of abstraction of capital-in-general, before addressing its constituent parts. On this subject, I refer to Mateo (2018c).
- 6.
According to Marx (1894: 866 [MECW 37]), “the principal agents of this mode of production itself, the capitalist and the wage labourer, are as such merely embodiments, personifications of capital and wage labour; definite social characteristics stamped upon individuals by the process of social production; the products of these definite social production relations.” Consequently, “what is true of the individual capitalist applies to the capitalist class” (Marx 1885: 122 [MECW 36]).
- 7.
However, both analytical Marxism (P. Roemer) and radical economics consider that the downward trend in the rate of profit (macro level) contradicts the assumption of profit-maximizing capitalist (micro level) (Gintis 1992). In this sense, let me clarify that Marxism does not oppose microfoundations, for which I refer to Mateo (2018a).
- 8.
Marx (1857b–58: 36 [MECW 29]) is clear on the role of production: “the result at which we arrive is, not that production, distribution, exchange and consumption are identical, but that they are all elements of a totality, differences within a unity. Production is the dominant moment, both with regard to itself in the contradictory determination of production and with regard to the other moments.” In turn, this has to be the basis for explaining crises.
- 9.
A clarification is necessary. It is important to emphasize that the rate of profit tends to fall not because labor becomes less productive, but because it becomes progressively more productive. This statement should be qualified. It is true for an abstract analysis of the accumulation of capital in which productive development is identified with the level of capital composition. Yet, when carrying out a macroeconomic analysis of a specific country, the complexity of this identification must be considered, as well the fact that developed and peripheral economies have particularities both in terms of the levels of capital composition as well as in the degree of productivity they can achieve. This will be addressed in the next chapter and, furthermore, it will be relevant for the macroeconomic analysis of Spanish capitalism within the framework of the Eurozone later in the book.
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Mateo Tomé, J.P. (2019). The Materialist Conception of the Crisis. In: The Theory of Crisis and the Great Recession in Spain . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27084-1_2
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